Clipper Cleaners

Specifically, one of the old Ferrell 2B clipper seed cleaners......

I've been looking for something I can use to "clean" up our northern hard shell pecans after picking them up with a baganut sweep. In addition to the nuts, you get a lot of trash in the form of leaves, sticks and hulls. Right now, we are separating the nuts and trash out by hand. Gets to be a chore with 500 + pounds of nuts.

Has anyone used a on Clipper for something like this? Worst case scenario it seems you might have to get creative and build your own custom screens for the nuts.

Usually.......if it has moving parts and involves bags and nuts......one is strongly advised to practice extraordinary caution .........but this one is harmless enough....

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Our nuts....errrrr pecans......are not nearly that clean....

I already tried making one of those. It was a miserable fail.

Pecans (or at least ours) come in various sizes.....northern hard shells generally being smaller than the southern paper shell varieties.......so the need for a means to vary the size of screens.

Aside from the pecans.......trash come in the form of large and small sticks, leaves, sticktights (nut shells with hull/husk/shuck still attached), the hull/husk/shuck.....or bits and pieces thereof. So larger and smaller than the nuts. So a large screen to filter out the big trash, a smaller screen to separate the small stuff and it would help if there is a fan blowing the really light stuff off.

The three options that I've come up with (aside from the manual pick them out method), would be one of these old clipper cleaners, which is just a big larger than an old washing machine; a snowco rotary seed cleaner....duel screen.....and lastly something like an all crop 66. Basically what is needed is the same separator function of the combine.....straw walkers, sieves, screens, etc. Skip the concave and dump in the side?

I dont know much about the Clippers on nuts? The concept is good screens and air to sort the good from the bad. Not sure they make screens large enough?? Interesting concept. I am sure there is something out there. But at your scale might be pricey. Maybe just send all of us a 5 lb bag on the pecans and we will sort them??:)

If I were to try it with the Clipper, I assume I'd have to make my own custom screens from some type of expanded metal wire.....or standard fence wires, like a 1" x 2" or 1" x 1"welded wire on the large end, and 1/2" x 1" on the small end......plus adjusting the fan to help blow off the trash.

The problem is our native northern hard shell pecans are different than the larger southern paper shell nuts......basically smaller......about half the size of their grafted southern cousins.......and being native.....the nuts tend to be highly variable in size. Larger ones being nearly double the size of the smaller ones.......with some being nearly round and others oblong. The place that cracks ours has about 12 different cracking machines setup for the various sized nuts folks bring in. The payoff for all this is the enhanced flavor....northern pecans have a much higher oil content.....as evidenced by the oil stains on the paper grocery bags they are stored in.

Still wonder if an Allis All Crop combine couldn't be used for this duty as well? Have never run one and it's been a while since I poked my head in one. Don't know if the openings on the straw walkers are large enough for the pecans to fall through. But if they are, seems you ought to be able to adjust the fan, chaffer and sieve enough to get a clean sample. Get those right and you may not need a screen.

 

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